²⁴ Absalom came to the king and said, “Your servant has sheepshearers; will the king and his servants please go with your servant?”

⁶ And Ishmael son of Nethaniah came out from Mizpah to meet them, weeping as he came. As he met them, he said to them, “Come to Gedaliah son of Ahikam.”^{(A) 7} When they reached the middle of the city, Ishmael son of Nethaniah and the men with him slaughtered them and threw them^[a] into a cistern.^(B)

⁸ Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king.^{(A) 9} But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord and did not go down to his house. ¹⁰ When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?” ¹¹ Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths,^[a] and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? As you live and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing.”^{(B) 12} Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day,^{[b] 13} David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk, and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.^(C)

David Has Uriah Killed

¹⁴ In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah.^{(D) 15} In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.”^(E)